Glamour
Page 45
His newest possession was a girl.
Of course. He smiled, bringing the tiny infant to his chest, bundling her into the space between his shirt and bare skin to keep her warm.
She quieted immediately, her little eyes wide, her clumsy head rooting around for mother’s milk that would never come.
“Milk,” he ordered, and as if by magic, a bottle of formula appeared in front of him in Rico’s outstretched hand. Ignacio took the bottle and teased it around the baby’s mouth, a surge of affection running through him when she attached and started suckling greedily.
Maria de la Cruz was watching all of this from the floor, her eyes already full of the knowledge that the rest of her life was now measured in seconds, not years.
“Let me feed her,” she whispered, holding out her arms. “Let me hold her, Ignacio, please—”
She never quite got to finish the “s” in please, because Ignacio, multi-tasker that he was, balancing baby and bottle in one thick arm, withdrew the Gold-plated pistol from his shoulder holster with his spare hand and shot Maria de la Cruz right between the eyes. She died instantly, sagging to the side as the bullet’s exit path through the back of her head painted a bright red line of blood down the wall.
The baby girl in his arms stiffened at the sudden explosive sound; her back arched, she spat the bottle teat out and scrunched up her face, wailing as her mother had wailed only moments earlier. “Shhh,” Ignacio murmured, rocking the tiny thing gently as he holstered his gun. “Come on, my girl. Everything will be okay.”
She quieted, finding the bottle teat again, pulling milk by sheer instinct and the ravenous hunger of being born.
“My beautiful girl,” Ignacio murmured, gazing down at the child whose mother and father he had just murdered in cold blood. She was falling asleep already, her thick lashes fluttering as she dreamed earth side for the first time. She was so pretty already, but more importantly, just like her mother, she would be an exquisite beauty. A beauty that Ignacio would shape and mold like a potter sitting behind his wheel, wet clay skimming against his hands, forming a masterpiece.
“All of this was meant to be, little one,” he whispered, rubbing his thumb along his baby’s forehead. “All of this was fate.”
He smiled. Fate had always been kind to Ignacio.
SERAPHINA
Eighteen Years Later
It’s almost night. Anticipation bubbles up in my belly; he’ll be here soon.
I have to be ready. Everything has to be ready. Everything has to be perfect. My skin is soft and creamy from the moisturizer he brought me; my pussy bare from where he shaved me last night. Every inch of me is silky and smooth and smelling of coconut.
I would usually be ravenous by now; my days have a very particular routine. I wake up with a sliver of the sun, peeking through the tiny crack in the boards that cover my windows to keep me safe. I read; I drink water by the gallon to quell the hunger pangs in my belly; I paint with the watercolors he left for me. I sleep, because I’m so weak from the lack of food. When I sleep, I dream of the same angel; the man made of midnight, with the kind eyes and the wide smile. I think about my small hand tucked in to his, his earthy smell, the way I am so sure he is real. The first time I saw him, his tender words. “I’ll get you out of here, sweetheart.”
He can’t be real, because he never came back. Not after I fell out of the window, fresh blood still running down my thighs from what Ignacio had done to me. “You’re a woman, now,” he had whispered, and then he had turned from my father to a monster, right before my eyes.
But mostly, I wait.
My pulse quickens as I hear his car pull up. I’ve never been in a car before. I wonder if it feels like flying along the dirt roads, engine purring. Not that I can fly, either.
I hurry to my spot on the bed that takes up the center of my circular room; on my hands and knees, facing away from the door, trying to still my breathing.
I hear the hard soles of his shoes as he ascends the stairs: clackclackclack. His keychain jangles. The key inserts into the locking mechanism and turns.
I break out into a cold sweat, which is so unlike me. I am always full of anticipation, excitement to see him after a long day by myself. But this night, something is wrong. My skin is clammy, oscillating between hot and cold, and I want to throw up.
The door closes again, locked tight to keep me safe. Those same shoes clack across concrete floors to the bed, to where I wait, ass in the air, naked as the day I was born into Ignacio’s arms in this exact spot.
He stops at the end of the bed. I feel the mattress dip as he climbs on to the bed behind me, already hard as he takes my hips in cold, rough palms and pulls me in to him. He plants a single kiss on my tailbone. “Did you miss me, Seraphina?”
My eyes fill with tears. “Yes, papi.” It’s true, I always miss him so much. He’s my entire world. Without him, this room stays dark and it’s just me, touching myself under my panties until my skin is raw and my fingers are soaked.
“Your hair is wrong,” he growls. Fear spikes in my belly, alongside the dull ache that has been in my side all day. I’ve never forgotten to arrange my hair just the way he likes it. He prefers it loose, so he can wrap it around his hands while he drives himself into me. Today I forgot. It’s the pain. The pain in my side. It’s been plaguing me for days; making me forget things.
I open my mouth to apologize, but my platitudes are drowned out by a sharp smack to my rear. And another. And another. It hurts. I grip handfuls of the snow-white sheets in front of me, barely visible in the fading light. Sometimes I think he visits me at dusk so that he doesn’t have to see me properly.
He stops striking me; my skin stings from the sudden assault. But it’s nothing compared to the sharp throb in my right side.
“Let down your hair,” Ignacio snaps over the sound of a zipper, and I sit back on my heels, fumbling with the long braid that reaches almost to my knees, combing the weaves out so that it hangs loose. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m – oh…”
Without any warning, he’s pushing inside me. I make small noises as he fills me up with himself, feeling myself contract around him. He brings one hand around to my front and strokes the tiny bundle of nerves between my legs that makes me arch my back like a cat in heat.
“Baby likes that?” he asks, nibbling on my ear. He never stays angry for more than a moment. He says it’s because he’s besotted by me. I think it’s because my pussy is clenching around his cock and making his mind blurry with lust.
He is not my father, but he is like a father to me, sometimes. And other times, like now, he is my lover. Like his lust-filled mind, sometimes the lines of what we are to each other blur until they run into one another.
My legs start to shake as his finger moves faster between my legs, circling me to the brink and then backing off. My stomach drops as he takes his fingers from my pussy and slides them into my mouth. “Suck.”
I open my mouth and taste myself on his skin. But my mind is somewhere else. It’s wondering if this pain in my side might kill me. It feels like it might. I feel as if somebody has taken the fire poker from the corner, the one I use to stoke the coals on cold winter nights, and rammed it into my stomach.
I start to shake harder. It’s no longer pleasure driving me to such dizzying heights; it’s knowing that I will pass out. Black bites at the edges of my vision as I struggle to breathe. I gasp as Ignacio pulls on my hair, pulling himself deeper inside me, swelling inside me as he lets go and I feel his warm seed spurt deep inside me.
He lets go of my hips and I collapse on my front. He will be angry. I’m supposed to turn around and lick him clean. This is our routine, the same thing, every night.
“Seraphina?” he says quietly, in a tone that suggests he knows something is not right. He pulls out of me, sticky semen seeping out of me, quickly growing cold on my thighs. He gets off the end of the bed and circles around to the head, kneeling beside my face.
It’s the first time
I have seen him all day; his short stubble, his dark eyes, soothe me. I am not alone. “Bambina, what’s wrong?” he asks.
“My stomach hurts,” I whisper.
“I would feed you more,” he says, stroking my cheek affectionately, “but we need to keep you small. You understand?”
I nod through the hunger that pulses in me; it is always there, an omnipotent beast that eats me from the inside out. I am always starving. I am always weak.
But this feeling isn’t hunger.
Ignacio senses it, too, I think. I feel his body tense under me as he brings the back of his hand up to my forehead. It is like ice to my fire; he sucks in a breath.
“You’re burning up, little bird,” he says, concern thick in his voice. He gets back on to the bed, pulling me into his lap so that my back is against his chest. On reflex I part my legs, and his fingers find the spot where they fit so well.
“Let me make you feel better, precious girl,” he says, his tongue on my neck, his fingers bringing me ever closer to the edge. I raise my hips greedily, wanting more, wanting relief and release. He starts to fuck me with his other hand, two fingers inside me, then three, the other hand circling my bud until I’m moaning loudly.
There are times I could almost believe that he is my father, except for times like this, the way I’m naked in his lap, my legs spread wide, my head resting back against his shoulder as his rough fingers stroke the wet spot between my legs. In the books I read, stained with mildew and covered in layers of dust, fathers do not do these things. He kisses my neck tenderly, rubbing me between my legs until they start to shake. “This will help you forget,” he breathes, his words warm on my neck.
Stars burst behind my eyelids as my orgasm finally arrives; and for a precious moment, with Ignacio’s fingers buried deep inside me, with his teeth biting softly at my neck, the pain goes away and everything is pure white light inside me.
But then he takes his fingers away, pushes me to the edge of the bed, to my feet, cold fluid running down the insides of my legs as he guides me gently to the small bathroom. “Clean yourself,” he says, turning on the faucet and filling the tiny shower cubicle with steam. “I’ll get you food, and some medicine.” I nod, not bothering to twist my hair up onto the top of my head like I normally would. I put my palms on the tiled wall and shuffle underneath the water.
“Phina?” Ignacio’s voice sounds like it is a million miles away. That’s impossible; I’ve never left this tower since the day I was born, unless you count the time I accidentally fell out of the window when I was a child. No, I could never be a million miles away from my dark love; he’s never more than a few feet away.
“Seraphina?!” More insistent this time. I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I can’t see. I can’t hear. There is a brief pain in my temple as my head hits hard tile, and then nothing.
XAVIER
I’m elbow-deep in Italian mafia blood and internal sutures when my cellphone vibrates in my pocket.
“Bro,” I hiss, catching my brother’s attention as he monitors the levels of anesthesia being pumped into the criminal on the table between us, the guy whose intestines I’m currently digging in for stray pieces of shrapnel. Liam raises his eyebrows. “My phone. Can you get it?”
Liam rolls his eyes, but he circles the table and our unconscious patient, Anthony No-Last-Name, never once taking his eyes off the vital signs his portable monitor is blinking out in red and green Technicolor. “You expecting a call?” he asks, reaching in to my jeans pocket and pulling out my iPhone.
“Holy shit,” he says, his expression grave. I never thought I’d describe a black man as pale, but I can see the blood disappear from my brother’s dark brown skin as he looks at the phone screen.
“What?” I ask, peering over. “I can’t read upside down, you know.”
“It’s The Florist,” Liam says. He’s seemingly forgotten all about the guy who he’s meant to be keeping sedated while I finish my treasure hunt inside his stomach.
“THE Florist?” I ask, glancing at the patient monitor. “Liam, Jesus, your guy’s blood pressure is—”
“Falling down into hell,” he finishes, rushing around to his spot at the head of the industrial kitchen table we’re using as a makeshift surgical bed. I’ve operated in some pretty crazy places, but I’ve never before had the aroma of frying oil stuck to the inside of my nostrils as I try to dig pieces of a special-issue 9mm bullet out of somebody.
“Fuck, I’ve got a bleeder here,” I snap, grabbing a pair of clamps from my tray of sterile instruments and fishing around in this guy’s fatty stomach cavity for the source of the blood loss. I find the artery and clamp it off, sweat beading on my forehead as a hulkishly tall dude in a custom-made Armani suit strolls into my sterile area, a string of red licorice hanging from between his teeth.
“Hey, Kanye, Jay-Z,” Sal Barbieri says to Liam and I, loosening his tie as he bites a chunk of the blood-red licorice. “Let’s get this shit tied up. We’ve got dinner service starting in an hour.”
As if on cue, his slightly shorter, equally annoying brother appears beside him, sporting the same cut of Armani suit, a plastic butcher’s apron over the top. He’s holding a stack of raw rib eye fillets in his arms, and out of the corner of my eye, I watch Liam’s face twitch.
“What part of sterile do you idiots not understand?” I say, gently suctioning the excess blood from my patient’s abdomen and spotting another piece of bullet. Jesus, this shot is so messy. “What kind of bullets do you guys use?” I ask, holding the latest piece of shrapnel up to show them. “This bullet is in a thousand tiny fucking fragments.”
Sal, the taller one, chews on his candy thoughtfully. “They’re homemade,” he replies, glancing at his brother.
“Awesome,” I mutter under my breath.
“What’d you say?” Sal asks, his tone pissed.
I grind my teeth in my jaw and try not to lose my shit; I literally have this guy’s life in my hands, and I don’t have time to argue with this mafia sociopath. “I said, how did you accidentally shoot your associate here?”
“Oh,” he replies. “We were playing Italian Roulette.”
Theo, whose arms must be getting tired holding all that beef, clears his throat pointedly. “That’s not Italian Roulette. Look it up on Urban Dictionary.”
Sal totally ignores his brother’s correction.
“Dude, don’t bring food into a fucking operating room,” Theo adds.
Sal’s mouth drops open as he stares at the ribeye fillets stacked ten tall in Theo’s arms. “Dude,” he replies, raising his eyebrows as he stares pointedly at the steaks. Theo just glares up at his brother, crossing the kitchen to the giant refrigerator unit and opening it with his foot.
My phone starts to vibrate again in Liam’s hand, but he’s too busy making sure our patient’s blood pressure comes back up. The Florist only calls when something is seriously wrong; I haven’t heard from him in what, nine, ten years? And it’s been a good nine or ten years without that crazy fucker in my business. Then again, I am standing in an Italian restaurant in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, pulling bullet fragments out of a dude who was playing roulette with his fucking handgun.
“Hey, Sal,” I say to the tall one. He flicks his hair out of his eyes, a new piece of liquorice in his mouth. “Yeah?”
“I need you to answer that phone and hold it up to my ear,” I say, finding a fresh bleeder in my patient’s stomach and sealing it off; this guy is cut to ribbons inside. He’ll probably be shitting into a bag for the rest of his life, assuming he survives the teeming bacteria of the Barbieri kitchen and this casual operation that nobody seems particularly worried about.
“Oh, sure, man,” Sal says, chewing loudly as he reaches over the patient and grabs the phone from Liam’s palm. Liam and I both open our mouths to say something as the phone starts to slide from Sal’s hand, right into the bloody gape of Anthony’s open stomach. In slow motion, he catches it, grinning like
a fucking psycho as he studies the screen.
“I meant to do that,” he muses, reading the iPhone screen. “The Florist, huh? You must’ve really fucked up if you need to order flowers for your girlfriend while you’re finger-fucking my buddy’s bullet wound here.”
“THE Florist?” Theo interrupts.
“THE Florist,” I confirm. “And he’s onto his third call. So unless you fuckers want him to come here and kill all of us, please, for the love of God, answer the fucking phone for me, will you, Sal?”
Sal rolls his eyes, but slaps the green “answer” icon and holds the phone to my ear. It’s really fucking hard to focus on two things at once, when those two things are performing surgery and trying to play nice with the most brutal man in all of Mexico.
“Is this The Doctor?” A Spanish accent comes down the line.
“This is The Doctor,” I reply. “How can I help?”
I’m at the suturing stage now. I replace my blood-soaked gloves with a fresh pair and start stitching Anthony’s skin back together, at the same time trying to listen to The Florist and not to the sound of Sal’s massive jaw moving back and forth as he grinds licorice like a fucking cow grinds grass.
“Patient is eighteen years old, female, unconscious,” The Florist says, totally emotionless. “Pain radiating from the right side of her stomach.”
“Probably fucking period pain,” Sal deadpans in a voice barely above a whisper. I fix him with a pointed stare. “Nausea? Fever?”
“Both,” The Florist confirms.
“Appendicitis is my guess,” I say, checking Anthony’s sutures are straight and in line. “If you can take her to the ER, they’ll confirm with some tests.” I shouldn’t fucking care about whether Anthony has a straight scar or not, but I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my work. Really, I should have just let him bleed out and rid the world of one more moronic person.